Sen. Bramble and the Utah PTA

It seems Sen. Bramble is taking on the PTA moms and dads in an effort to...

Actually, I am lost as to his motive.

His bill, SB 199, wants to grant equal access to all parent and parent/teacher groups. Evidently this is a problem in Provo, so he is using his legislative prerogative to mandate a change for the entire state. Equal access doesn't seem like a bad thing, but he wants to prohibit schools from working with a parent group that requires dues for its members to vote and elect their leaders. He added an amendment in committee yesterday that would allow a school to work with a dues-paying organization that waives the dues requirement upon request. So you could belong to the organization, use its name, benefit from its resources, elect its leaders and not pay to belong.

Huh? He wants to legislate how a private organization conducts its own affairs? Is this good public policy? Because I can think of many professional organizations that collect dues and elect their leaders, and I'm pretty sure they don't want the Legislature telling them whether or not they can continue.

Bramble Spits on Provo

You may not know that Curt Bramble, Utah State Senate Majority Leader from Provo, is a licensed hot air balloonist. He's been flying hot air balloons (anyone else get the symbolism here?) for 25 years and has 5000 hours of flying experience.

Unfortunately for those below, this is how Bramble steers his balloon:

While there isn’t a traditional steering mechanism on a hot air balloon, Bramble said he maneuvers by dropping the balloon into various layers of wind. We were inching toward the field, as Bramble put it, but he was indeed steering the balloon.

How does he find those layers of wind? The “Spit-ometer” test. It may say no spitting over the side of the Empire State Building, but spit flies freely over the side of the wicker basket, and if you keep your eyes on that wad, it will show you which way the wind is blowing. We watched Bramble’s fall, and then suddenly go to the left, or east. Bramble eased off the heat, and dropped into that layer of wind to pull us closer to the target.

Now I don't know about you, but the thought of Bramble's spit landing on me while he is up there trying to steer his balloon isn't very comforting.

A little research on the Internet led to Wikipedia which had this:

For example, to determine wind directions beneath the balloon a pilot might simply spit or release a squirt of shaving cream and watch this indicator as it falls to determine where possible turns are (and their speed).

The shaving cream idea certainly seems a lot better to me...